Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 90, 10101 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjap/2020190333

Regular Article

Modeling and optimization of n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction using 2-dimensional numerical simulation

¹ Materials Physics Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, Sultan Moulay Slimane University, P.O. Box 523, 23000 Beni Mellal, Morocco
² Condensed Matters and Renewables Energies Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, Hassan II University, P.O. Box 146, 20650 Mohammedia, Morocco
³ Study Group of Optoelectronic Materials, Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, Cadi Ayyad University, P.O. Box 549, 40000 Marrakech, Morocco
⁴ Laboratory of Physics Condensed Matter, Faculty of Sciences, University of Tunis EL Manar, 2092 Tunis, Tunisia

^* e-mail: m.manoua@usms.ma

Received: 18 November 2019
Received in final form: 28 March 2020
Accepted: 3 April 2020
Published online: 13 May 2020

Abstract

In this work, n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction was investigated using two-dimensional numerical simulation. The effect of Zinc Oxide thickness, carrier concentration in Zinc Oxide layer, minority carrier lifetime of bulk Silicon and the interface states density on electrical properties were studied in dark and under illumination conditions. This study aimed to optimize these parameters in order to obtain n-ZnO/p-Si solar cell with high conversion efficiency and low cost. The simulation was carried out by Atlas silvaco software. As results, a very low saturation current Is, low series resistance Rs, an ideality factor n between 1 and 1.5 were obtained for optimal charge carrier concentrations in the range [5 × 10¹⁹–5 × 10²¹ cm⁻³] and a thickness of Zinc Oxide between 0.6 and 2 µm. Moreover, a photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 24.75% was achieved without interfacial defect, which decreases to 5.49% for an interface defect density of 5 × 10¹⁴ cm⁻².